How My Grandmother's Stories About Our Ancestors Inspired My NovelJunie(Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

African-American culture revolves around oral storytelling, a tradition I inherited. My grandmother was always the family storyteller. She grew up in her grandparents' house, a place filled with aunts, uncles and cousins from all generations, where stories and imagination were most of their entertainment. Being next to the kitchen, her bedroom allowed her to eavesdrop on the adults through the door, uncovering and documenting all the family secrets. Throughout her life, she maintained a library of her ancestors’ narratives from the last century inside her head, kept fresh through repetition.

One of these was the story of Jane Cotton, my great-great-great-grandmother. She escaped slavery before the Civil War to help establish an African-American community in rural Alabama — one where much of my family remains today. When my grandmother retold it during a 2018 spring visit to my grandparents’ house in Alabama, something clicked into place. Working late under a family quilt that night, I typed and outlined, imagining a multigenerational story akin to Isabel Allende’sHouse of the Spiritsset in our family town. As I outlined, I couldn’t stop thinking about Jane, who ended up inspiring the titular character in what would become my new novel,Junie.

I spent a year studying novel writing, attending a class and a writing group, never dreaming I’d share it with anyone. That all changed in March 2020. Two weeks of teaching from home in New York City became nearly two years of quarantine in my studio apartment with my cat. Loss, absence and uncertainty surrounded me; the loss of thousands in my city alone, the absence of my family and friends who’d all fled New York, the uncertainty of when or if I’d ever see my loved ones again. When faced with the unimaginable, I turned to a story to live. The project gave purpose to a difficult, isolating time. I spent all my free time telling myself Junie’s story and finished the book before the end of the year.

When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act — one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave, tethered to this world unless Junie can free her. She enlists the aid of Caleb, the guests’ coachman, and their friendship soon becomes something more.

Yet, as long-held truths crumble, she realizes Bellereine hides dark and horrifying secrets she can no longer ignore. With time ticking down, Junie pushes against the harsh current that has controlled her entire life. Facing an increasingly unfamiliar world beyond her control, she asks herself: When we choose love and liberation, what must we leave behind?

I aimed to create Junie as a realistic and complex portrayal of an enslaved person; one that reflected my family’s memories of their ancestors, not the one-dimensional characterizations I’d encountered in literature. Portrayals of enslaved people typically show either angelic tropes or extreme suffering. But I wanted my book to center a character grappling with terrible situations, yet possessing the full spectrum of human experience — dreams, love, loss and imperfections.

In early 2021, my grandparents' sudden deaths left my book — which I’d always meant to share with them when we reunited — unread. And as I attempted to make a beginning, middle and end out of my own tragedy, I understood my grandmother in a way I hadn’t before. Growing up, I thought she told me our family’s stories so that I’d know about the ancestors I’d never meet, but now I see it differently. In telling the story of Jane Cotton, a woman she hadn’t known, she was actually keeping her own grandmother alive, just as I’ve tried to do throughJunie. Her storytelling wasn’t about the listener, but about herself: through her stories, she filled the absence of her own lost storytellers.

My grandmother may have never gotten to read this book, but, like Junie’s sister Minnie, I like to think she’s watching, ever-present on the horizon.

Ballantine Books

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source: people.com